Dennis Quaid visits Dallas hospital

Actor impressed with Children's medication safety system

Dennis Quaid was in front of the cameras at Children's Medical Center for a different reason on July 22.

The actor and his wife, Kimberly, were at the hospital to raise public awareness about the need for more state-of-the-art medication safety systems like the one in place at Children's, which uses bar-coding and electronic scanners to match patients to their prescribed medications and proper dosing information.

Children's implemented medication bar-coding in 2001. Using bar-coded administration of medications and clinical documentation in the electronic health record helped the hospital earn a place among the 100 "Most Wired" hospitals in 2008, a list compiled and sponsored by Hospital and Health Networks magazine.

The Quaids became advocates for safer handling of patient medication and the reduction of human error at hospitals after a dosing mistake at a Los Angeles hospital nearly cost the Quaids their newborn twins' lives.

Reducing human error

Through a sequence of human errors that began at the pharmaceutical company and ended with the administering nurse at the hospital, the babies were mistakenly given massive overdoses of heparin, a powerful blood thinner. The babies survived, but a similar incident killed three infants at an Indianapolis hospital a year earlier.

"That mistake could have been avoided if they had a system in place like Children's Medical Center does," Quaid said. He likened the medication verification system at Children's to the aviation industry's safety innovations of "auto-pilot, color-coded radar and GPS," calling the medication safety verification system "a back-up that saves lives."

Before speaking to the media, the Quaids toured Children's, and met with physicians and clinicians who are involved in many patient and medication safety initiatives.

Children's is the first hospital the Quaids have toured following the incident with their children. The twins, a boy and girl named Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, have fully recovered from the overdose and are now doing fine, Quaid said.

Resources

The Quaid Foundation
Health Library

Tags: dennis quaid, dallas hospital, patient safety, medication safety system, proper dosing, prescribed medications